


Talk With Me

by Boi_Ginny



Series: With Me [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, First Time for Everything Fest, M/M, Minor Violence, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 14:02:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12060471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boi_Ginny/pseuds/Boi_Ginny
Summary: This story takes place just after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier breaks in to Steve’s apartment, and they have a bit of a talk and reach some long overdue conclusions.





	Talk With Me

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS NOT A HAPPY STORY!
> 
> I appreciate that warning so I’m giving it to you too. If you’re looking for fluff look elsewhere. If you’re looking for pain, hi and welcome.

Steve walked into his darkened apartment and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.

He dropped his keys on the table by the door and flipped the switch again. Nothing happened again.

He slowly closed the door behind him, keeping his back to it, and scanned the room as best he could in the pitch dark. It was silent. None of the furniture appeared moved or broken. All of the curtains had been drawn, not as he left them. He strafed across the living room to a lamp on an end table and turned the knob. Nothing happened.

A shadow shifted on the floor across the room, where it had been hidden from the door behind the couch, but in view now. Dark blues and browns and grays, nearly invisible. A man with long dark hair, sitting against the wall with his legs pulled up to his chest. He wore a loose fitting long sleeved charcoal shirt and indigo blue jeans, gray canvas shoes with the white rubber painted over, soft dark gloves. Black leather might look impressive, but it’s not stealth wear. Not really. This was. In the shifting city shadows, he would have been a ghost. The lower half of his face was covered by a navy blue bandana which he slowly pulled down with his left hand, whirring and clicking in the silence of the apartment.

“Bucky?”

The ghost said nothing. But the face that was revealed was the one from the bridge, the one from the helicarrier. Older than the one in Steve’s memory, lined more deeply by the years, topping a larger and more powerful body, but undeniable.

“Did you cut the power?” Steve asked.

“No.”

The ghost reached out and held up a lightbulb, set it down with a soft clink on the floor in a stack of same. He had taken the bulbs in Steve’s apartment out of their sockets. Something Romanov would have thought of. Something that never would have occurred to Steve.

“What are you doing here?” Steve said.

“Waiting for you,” the ghost replied.

“Your mission?” Steve asked, shifting back subtly to take an attack if one came.

“No,” the ghost said. “The way you walked in here, if I wanted to kill you you’d already be dead.”

As if Romanov hadn’t reminded him enough. He was a bunker buster, not a stealth missile. He sighed.

“That’s not comforting, Buck.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.”

The ghost was silent for a moment, and when his words came they were hesitant.

“I wanted to hear you say it again.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. 

“Hear me say what?”

The ghost paused again, seeming to draw his words in from far away.

“That name. What you called me.”

“Bucky?” Steve asked, confused.

The ghost breathed deeply in silence. Nodded.

“It’s your name,” Steve said.

“It was. I don’t know if it still is. I had to hear you say it again.”

Steve waved a hand to encompass his violated apartment.

“So you broke in?”

“Figured you wouldn’t just let me walk through the front door in the middle of the night.”

“You figured wrong. Knock next time.”

The ghost shook his head.

“Won’t be a next time. It was hard enough to stay in the city this long and stay hidden.”

“And the lights?”

“Didn’t say I wanted to look at you.”

It was a joke. Steve could hardly see him, couldn’t see if he was wearing the impish smirk that so belonged on that face, but he could hear it. So nearly that dearly beloved voice. Steve’s wariness fought with joy in the pit of his stomach.

And Steve couldn’t help but react just the same, put on a small sad smile and say, “Jerk.”

The ghost unfolded his legs straight on the floor, and quietly responded in kind.

“Punk.”

And it was so easy, the natural reaction, that Steve could almost think he was just chatting with the man before he fell from the train. So he took a risk. He walked around the couch and crouched in front of the ghost. He had forgone the black rings around his eyes, wasn’t strapped with copious weaponry, and he was sitting loose limbed and comfortable on the floor. Like he belonged there.

The ghost glanced him over from the top of his head to the bottom of his shoes, a cursory inspection that still made Steve feel completely exposed.

“You look wrong,” the ghost said. 

“Speak for yourself, pal.”

The ghost exhaled through his nose, a puff of a laugh, and raised a hand to point at him.

“You’re supposed to be smaller.”

“So are you.”

“You’re supposed to be a lot smaller.”

The ghost tilted his head to the side, and this time Steve could see the smirk.

“Not bad though.”

Steve could feel himself blush, and hoped it wouldn’t be apparent in the dark. Had he forgotten about Captain America? Hard to believe, when he’d been fighting him for days. Or was he just saying Steve wasn’t supposed to _be_ Captain America? Steve would allow for that. He could agree with him, nine days out of ten. It was just that on that tenth day, he was pulling Hydra out of the sky.

But… Not bad, huh?

“Yeah, alright, that’s enough of that,” Steve said.

The ghost jostled Steve’s leg with his foot, still smiling, so relaxed that Steve jostled him back without thinking. And knew his blush was deepening. Like it was Bucky teasing him again. Like he was still so small, and Bucky was still so much bigger, eclipsing everything else in his life.

“Really, Buck,” Steve said. “You just want to hear me say your name?”

The ghost stared off to the side of Steve’s face, not meeting his eyes. He shrugged with one shoulder, his left, servos humming in the dark. 

“Just want to hear you talk.”

“Why?”

“You just sound like… I can remember what you sound like. I can remember things when you talk.”

Every word was forced, over enunciated and ground out like simply speaking took incredible effort. Steve felt what it cost him just to be there, just to be having a conversation, and how valuable his words must be. His fear dissipated, leaving only sadness. He sat down on the floor, stretching his legs out alongside the ghost, leaning back against the couch. He was within arm’s reach and forced himself not to flinch.

The Winter Soldier had stopped, on the bridge, when Steve said Bucky’s name. He’d stopped, in the helicarrier, when Steve reminded him about the end of the line. Steve’s voice hadn’t changed after Erskine’s formula. It was the same one Bucky heard after he stuttered and cracked through puberty. If the ghost remembered Steve’s voice, then Steve would give it to him. And whatever he could remember, Steve would tell him.

“Alright,” he started. “James Buchanan Barnes. I heard your momma yell it at you when we were late for supper. Buchanan was a hell of a mouthful so I called you Bucky. And you asked everybody to call you that.”

“Mom wouldn’t…”

“Nope. She always called you James. Your momma and mine too. They said Bucky made it sound like you were a little kid. We just got used to it.”

The ghost leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. 

“Keep talking,” he said quietly.

So Steve talked. He talked about the past, told the ghost the story of his life with Bucky. How they met, how they lived. How they parted, came together again, parted again. The ghost didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes, hardly breathed. He didn’t react to any part of the story, even Bucky’s fall from the train, seeming to just soak up Steve’s words, until Steve told him about the plane going into the ice, and waking up so much later.

“That explains it,” he mumbled. “They told me you were dead.”

They. Hydra. While he was frozen helpless in the ice, Hydra tried to destroy his best friend. Steve forced the images out of his mind. Time enough for that later.

The ghost laid his hand over Steve’s calf, squeezing gently. His right hand, warm and silent. Steve burned where he was touched. His wariness at seeing the ghost had been new. He had never been afraid of Bucky. But the tightness that wound in his stomach, the longing for his touch to never end, that was as familiar as his face, and came back from Steve’s past like floodwaters rising.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve said. It wasn’t enough. But it had to be said.

“Wasn’t you done it,” the ghost said simply. Which was the truth. But changed nothing.

Steve’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he could start to see all the little differences in the sameness on the ghost’s face. His hair looked lighter long and without pomade slicking it back. And more than a day of stubble wouldn’t have grown on Bucky’s face if he’d had a choice in the matter. The years had weathered his skin, creased his eyes, firmed the set of his jaw. Years Steve could have watched pass, changes he wouldn’t have noticed gradually accumulate, if he hadn’t been such a damn fool and crashed a damn plane into the damn ice and he could have found Bucky again.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find you again,” Steve said, abbreviating his thoughts.

“No. This time I found you.”

The ghost cleared his throat. He spoke apparently to the ceiling, avoiding Steve’s eyes.

“Feel like I should apologize for putting you in the hospital.”

Steve’s stomach clenched. It had been easier than he expected to reconcile the ghost reclining on his floor with his childhood friend. But both had to be reconciled with the Winter Soldier. The voice in that body, shouting violence at him in the helicarrier. The eyes in that face, training on him to fire and putting five bullets through him. Somehow.

The ghost’s gloved fingers moved in unconscious patterns on Steve’s leg, fiddling absently with the seams of his pants, and Steve trembled. He always had, when Bucky touched him. He’d known, when the Winter Soldier didn’t make his knees weak and his heart burn, that it hadn’t really been him. Not behind his eyes. But this ghost…

“It wasn’t you at the time,” Steve said. “I knew that.”

“Was and wasn’t. I don’t think I can explain.”

“You don’t have to.”

The ghost shook his head.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t… put it together. Until I heard you talk. To make it all make sense.”

“Does it make sense now?” Steve asked.

“More sense. A few days awake and I could start to remember. And it’s been a couple weeks.”

“Waiting for me?”

“Yeah. I watched you in the hospital. And I watched you come home. Watched you walk. Figured you were back at a hundred percent now. Couldn’t show up while you were still limping cuz of me.”

Steve had never seen him. Not once, not even a shadow. And neither had anyone else, or he’d be gone. Hydra really had made him good enough to take out Romanov. What the hell had they done to him…

Steve tried to smile.

“Wouldn’t be here at all if you hadn’t pulled me out of the river. So, thanks for that.”

The ghost chuckled.

“Thanks for not kicking me out the window when you came home.”

Steve leaned forward and laid his hand over the ghost’s on his leg. He half expected the ghost to pull his hand back, but he let Steve touch him. Looked down at Steve’s hand over his with an unreadable expression.

“Never would,” Steve said. “If you remember anything you’ve gotta remember that it was always you and me.”

Steve picked up the ghost’s hand, and held it.

“Til the end of the line.”

“Yeah.”

The ghost swallowed hard, and resumed addressing the ceiling. His throat worked around the word for a moment before he spoke, and when he did it was more a breath than speech.

“Steve…”

He trailed off, shaking his head. He tried again, testing the name. 

“Steve. Steve, you… The way you talk… The way you say that name…” 

He shifted his fingers against Steve’s palm, stroking softly. Steve’s blush burned on his cheeks. His eyes ached with it.

“Steve, were we ever…”

The ghost paused and licked his lips, and Steve’s heart froze in his chest. Oh, no, please no. No, we weren’t ever, please don’t ask…

“Just tell me, just don’t make excuses,” the ghost said. He summoned reserves of energy, straightening against the wall and meeting Steve’s eyes. His were still that superb bottomless blue, the blue Steve could never find a pencil for and could never shade quite right to capture their exquisiteness. And Steve yanked his hand back automatically, retreating from his eyes and from the question he dreaded. The ghost couldn’t know, how much it would hurt to ask. He couldn’t know, if he didn’t remember.

And the ghost asked.

“Were we together?”

He filled in the vagaries of the question with unnecessary hand gestures. Steve didn’t need them.

No. Only in Steve’s most treasured dreams. Only in his most painful fantasies. No. Never. And it _hurt_ , suddenly hurt as much as losing him, to have to say it.

“No. No, we weren’t.”

The ghost sat up from the wall, hands shaping the air in confusion to a buzzing accompaniment from his left arm. 

“But I feel like we were. Like I just can’t remember but I can remember the feeling.”

“No, Buck,” Steve said, hating the truth of it but turning over the idea the ghost had introduced. He felt like they were? “You were my best friend. We were close but we weren’t lovers, no.”

“Then why? Why do I feel like this with you? Why do you make me remember? This never happened before. Why you?”

And Steve wanted to tell him. He wanted to tell him he was remembering Steve watching Bucky from across the room, looking up and meeting his eyes, seeing Steve color and look away. He wanted to tell him he was remembering Steve taking more excuses than he should to brush up against Bucky in the kitchen, or tussle with him on the couch, too many excuses to touch him and see him smile.

And then he realized, he would have to tell him that Bucky never complained. Or pushed him away. Or stopped smiling. And that he had never recognized what that might mean.

“I can’t tell you that,” Steve said instead. “I don’t know.”

Their voices had gotten louder, and the ghost winced. He glanced at the window, listening. The sounds of the city continued uninterrupted by stomping boots, and after a moment he relaxed. His eyes cast unseeing around the room, searching in his own memories. When he spoke his voice was barely a whisper.

“I think… I just never told you.”

A void opened in Steve’s head. _Bucky_ never told _him_? It wasn’t possible. Bucky hadn’t spent a minute without a girl on his arm. So easygoing, so devastatingly handsome, so far outside of any league Steve could even see from a high place on a clear day. _Bucky_ never told _him_? When his broken body wouldn’t even let him go dancing, when Bucky was out every night until the wee hours, coming back flushed with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and smelling of perfume? When Steve was filling sketchbooks with that smile and those broadening shoulders and lamenting the fact that he couldn’t capture that quick tongue with his pencil as well and keep Bucky’s laugh pressed between pages so it would never have to stop?

 _Bucky_ never told _him_?

“I remember…” the ghost said quietly, voice trailing over the words like he was afraid to hold them too tightly. “I think I remember… We were just kids. Maybe… twelve? Small. You got it handed to you pretty good one time, after school. Came over with blood in your hair. You didn’t want to go home looking like that.”

“Yeah. I remember that too.” And he did. Couldn’t remember who’d come after him, could’ve been anybody from back then, but he remembered running the whole way to Bucky’s family’s place instead of his own, stumbling up the stairs, collapsing when Bucky opened the door to his pounding. He’d wanted to clean up before he faced his mother, he did, and that’s what he’d said, but more than that he’d wanted… Bucky. Just _needed_ to see Bucky, to dull the pain.

The ghost’s fists clenched in his lap. “And I remember… when I saw it… Someone hit you that hard in the fucking head. They could’ve killed you. I thought you were gonna die on our bathroom floor. And I wanted it to be me instead. Didn’t know what that meant. And I had to wash your hair in our fucking sink cuz your hands were shaking so bad and your blood was in our sink and I wanted it to be mine. That’s when I knew.”

Steve was speechless. All he could possibly say was, “Knew what?” but the ghost wasn’t finished. Paused just for a thought. And it didn’t need to be asked anyway. It was when Steve had known, too. When Bucky wrestled his face from terror at the sight of Steve with blood running down his face into calm and practically carried Steve, protesting feebly that he was fine, to clean him up. To take care of him, despite himself. When they’d stopped being just friends, separate, and became the inseparable pair that defined them both.

“You were so _good_ , Steve,” the ghost said. “So much better than me, so much better than them. But they came after you. Tried to break something so perfect… And anything I could do for someone so good, I would. I just wanted to be with you, any way I could…”

Steve could have said it himself. Should have said it, on that bathroom floor, and countless times after when Bucky held him up and carried him through the things he couldn’t do alone. How could Bucky think he was any less valuable to Steve, less worthy of that fierce devotion, when every time Steve didn’t even know he needed him he was always there?

“And I felt like shit for how much I liked touching your hair…” The ghost bit the back of the knuckles of his right hand, spoke indistinctly through his fingers. “I was supposed to be helping you and I just liked touching you…”

“Awh hell Buck,” Steve mumbled in disbelief, reeling at the confession. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah, I do. I’m gonna have to disappear, Steve. I shouldn’t even be here. They’re probably watching you too. I just had to… I had to be near you again. I had to remember. And I think… I think I do. I think I remember this right.”

The ghost moved closer to him, and Steve backed as far as he could into the couch. The expression on the ghost’s face was pleading near panic, longing Steve remembered being his own in quiet dark moments he had tried to put out of his mind. So many nights, getting up the courage and losing it every time. Decades, wasted. Decades, if the ghost was telling him Bucky had felt the same way he always had and never said. Decades he could never get back. He wanted to push him away again. Didn’t know if he could.

“So you have to tell me,” the ghost said, voice cracking. “Was it just me?”

The lie prepared itself. Steve opened his mouth to say he had no idea what the ghost was talking about. He was ready to paper over the memories again, tell him that he was sorry, that the ghost could let go of that feeling and just leave. He could pretend again, for his sake, that even in that moment they both remembered that through the haze of exhaustion and pain Bucky softly combing his fingers through Steve’s hair under the running water hadn’t made him shiver. Pretend, though the feeling had never left him in the years after. Pretend that Steve hadn’t lusted after Bucky as long as he’d known what lust was, that his shivering hadn’t turned to craving of his skin and his kiss when they grew up and lived together, and when it snowed and the heat went out and they pushed their beds together and slept under one blanket Steve hadn’t ground his legs together in silence to soothe himself because he couldn’t touch.

Steve thought he could say it. Deny it. So the ghost could go. Again.

But what left his mouth was the truth. He could never lie to Bucky. Couldn’t start lying to his ghost. 

“No. It wasn’t just you.”

The ghost pursed his lips and just looked at him for a moment. Steve could only imagine what he saw. Steve’s face was mostly the same. Bucky had met Captain America but had grown up with Steve Rogers, with that face on an oversized head perched on a busted body that shattered at every opportunity. Was he seeing that old longing writ on that old face? Steve could feel it, in his drawn brow and parted lips, and didn’t even try to wipe it away.

“And you never said,” the ghost said finally.

Steve ran his hands back through his hair. Took a deep breath. Still could barely keep his voice steady. “I couldn’t, Buck. We couldn’t. It was a different time. It wasn’t an option. Just a feeling.”

The ghost reached out and ran the back of two fingers of his right hand down Steve’s cheek. This close, Steve could see his eyes clearly, glassy with the black centers blown wide and nearly consuming the blue, a dark storm of unmistakable desire driving out a clear day. Steve had seen that look on Bucky before. But to have it turned on him… He shuddered. How many times had he missed it?

“What about this time?” the ghost said. Like he had been in Steve’s head the whole time. Like Bucky always had been. Steve leaned heedless into his touch, and his eyelids fluttered. This time… This time they were on opposite sides of the war. This time the machinations of the world had made them enemies. But Steve didn’t care. This time they knew.

The ghost rose on his knees over him, ducked his head to press his forehead to Steve’s. He was breathing Steve’s air, his hair was falling in soft waves across Steve’s face, and he smelled a little like cigarettes and a lot like home.

“Steve,” the ghost said. “I’m gonna have to leave while it’s still dark. But it’ll be dark for a while yet. And this… This might be all we get.”

“Bucky…”

The ghost closed his eyes, and sighed. “Say that again.”

“Bucky,” Steve all but moaned. “Jesus, God, Bucky.”

And Steve’s body made a decision for him, surged up into the ghost and kissed him, sliding his lips across that perfect mouth and moaning relief he heard echoed back. All the times he had imagined this, he hadn’t known how hot his lips would be, how soft, burning silk. He wrapped his arms tight around the ghost, pulling him close and devouring him. The ghost straddled his legs, leaning full into him. All the times he had imagined this, the body had been larger than his. His smaller frailer frame could have disappeared into Bucky’s arms. But the ghost disappeared in his, melting into him and meeting his kiss with desperate heat. Steve pressed forward and the ghost parted his lips. His tongue slipped past Steve’s teeth, and his mind went white.

Steve felt as though the serum had left him and he’d run miles in his original state, stretching and straining himself to his limit until all he could feel was his heartbeat and he knew he should stop before he hurt himself but he just couldn’t. Sheer determination was keeping him on this earthly plane, unwillingness to stop moving forward, because he was moving forward into _him_ , reaching to find the other half of the sundered pair in the ghost that had come to him. He was lapping across the ghost’s tongue damning the consequences. Even if they only got this and even if it destroyed him Steve was tasting _Bucky_ though he had no way of knowing what Bucky had tasted like. But the rhythm of their kiss and the taste of his tongue and the heat of his mouth was so right, so familiar, it had to be. If Steve kept going until he had nothing left, if he ripped himself apart tonight, it would be fitting, if it led him to Bucky. Nothing else really mattered.

The ghost brought his hands up to Steve’s face, still gloved. Steve stilled them and pulled away from the kiss to take the gloves off. He held the two hands, so different, glancing back and forth between flesh and metal. And not even that mattered, not even the glaring difference, the weapon on the body of his friend sent to destroy him. Steve kissed both palms, first the flesh and then the metal, and brought both back up to his face. The whirring in his ear blended with the ghost’s panting breaths, as he was drawn back into a deep kiss. The ghost carded his hands through Steve’s hair and drank him in like water after the longest drought, and Steve welcomed it.

Steve mouthed down his jaw, pulled off the bandana around his neck to expose more of his skin. Steve played his lips and his tongue over the ghost’s neck, tasting salt and dust and time. The ghost groaned and tightened his fingers in Steve’s hair.

“Please,” he mumbled breathlessly in Steve’s ear, “I want you to keep saying it.”

“Bucky.”

Steve whispered his name into his own skin. He found his hands halfway up the ghost’s back under his shirt, and the ghost arched into his hands, encouraging his touch. So he touched, while they kissed hungrily, again and again. Let his hands rove over the ghost’s back, up his sides, pressing in and discovering little touches that made him gasp. His explorations revealed no hidden weaponry, and Steve was amazed. He really had come for this.

The ghost pulled his shirt off over his head, and Steve stared at the glorious expanse of muscle so revealed. Bucky had always been a big guy and always been fit, a shoe in for the Army, but this… He remembered details from Romanov’s files. Hydra. They had been trying to replicate Erskine’s experiments. This body was meant to be like his. But a gnarled line of scars connected his mechanical left arm to his shoulder. At least Steve had gone willingly.

But the ghost was ignoring Steve’s reverence, pulling at his shirt. Steve let him take it and toss it aside, and they dove back together, pressing fierce eagerness between them. The arm was stabbing cold, but Steve barely noticed for the firm yield and dense heat of his chest. Stronger than he had ever dreamed. The ghost bit across his shoulder, sucking bruises into the skin, and canted his hips down, making Steve finally aware that they were both aching hard. Steve whimpered. The pain and the pleasure of it made his blood ring in his ears, and his immediate future dissolved into questions. He’d never… God Bucky would tease him mercilessly if he knew he’d never… The least he could do was say. Let the ghost decide if he was worth it.

He shrugged away from the ghost’s mouth, caught his eyes. “Buck, I have no idea what I’m doing. This is already the most I’ve touched of anyone.”

“I don’t give a shit,” the ghost said. “Please, Steve. If this is all we get… I want you. I think… I know… I’ve always wanted you.”

Steve’s answering groan sounded to him like a sob. If this is all we get, it will be everything.

“Bucky… Do you want to get off the floor?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Come on.”

Steve shifted back, reluctantly breaking contact with the ghost, who stood to free his legs. He held down a hand to pull Steve up, his left. The plates of his hand shifted but didn’t flex, digging into Steve’s palm and resisting all pressure. When he was standing, holding the ghost’s hand, Steve brought it to his lips again, brushing kisses across the back of his knuckles, watching pained desire crossing his face at the touch. Steve wondered what he could feel with that hand, and if he’d ever get the chance to ask. The ghost stroked the tips of his fingers across Steve’s jaw, gentle with such a powerful weapon, and Steve’s inhibitions vanished. If he could be so careful, learn new uses for old tools, Steve could too.

He led the ghost into his bedroom. He had taken the lightbulbs and drawn the curtains here too, and the room was completely shrouded but Steve knew his way. He pulled the ghost over to his bed and dropped him into it. Climbed over him, wrapping him up close again and nuzzling into his neck. The ghost threw his arms around his back and nipped at his ear.

“Please don’t stop saying it,” the ghost said.

“Bucky. God, Buck, I missed you.”

“I missed you Steve. I had to forget you, over and over. I remembered you over and over…”

Steve silenced him with a kiss, driving his presence into the ghost’s mouth, the reality of himself, and pulling back the same.

“You say it. Say my name.”

“Steve…”

The ghost disintegrated against him in frenzied repetition of his name, raining kisses on his face and neck. Their skin slid across each other and they tumbled, a tangle of limbs and cries of names that were little more than sounds of pleasure with frantic kisses between. Steve let the ghost unfasten his pants and pull them off with his boxers. Toed off his shoes and kicked his clothes off the bed. Moved his hands to the ghost’s waistband as he toed off his own shoes and stripped him.

And holding the completely naked man against him, Steve had to slow. He couldn’t overlay the reality of the ghost’s body on his recollections and imaginings of Bucky, the reality so far surpassed them, but he had to try. The darkness robbed him of the detail, so Steve let his hands draw it for his mind’s eye. The ghost was in a hurry, but Steve forced him to take some time. One night, of all they could have had. One night that might have to be enough. The least the ghost could give him was some moments of closeness, tender exploration and heartsick enjoyment. And he pressed the name into the ghosts skin with every seeking touch.

“Bucky,” he said, tonguing over his collarbones and loosing grumbling moans from the ghost’s mouth.

“Bucky,” he said, kissing across the wide and firm plane of chest that resisted his teeth against the will of the ghost, sighing and softening against him when his bite indented the flesh.

“Bucky,” he said, brushing his lips over the ghost’s nipples and making him gasp.

“Steve,” the ghost replied, hands busy on his shoulders and down his arms, testing his own shape and learning his own give. He had wanted Steve, too. He wanted this. He was glorying in Steve’s body as much as Steve was in his. 

And Steve stowed the tears that tried to come for later. After. When he was gone again. Not now, when his time could be better spent.

Steve pulled him close with his back into Steve’s chest, and heard a deep groan tear out of his throat when Steve ground his erection against the crease of his ass. He opened his mouth on the ghost’s neck and grazed his lips above the scar, heard his name gasped back to him. His eager hands mapped the ghost’s body to find and learn the ways to bring forth such beautiful sounds and make him shove his hips into Steve’s seeking friction. Steve’s hand skated down over the planes of his chest, the ripple of his stomach, and lower, fingering soft hair and drawing needy whimpers from the ghost.

He slipped his fingers along the length of him, and closed his hand softly. His mind blurred. The ghost filled his hand, filled his arms, filled his hearing with satisfied groans and his vision with beautiful arches of pleasure. And his heart with an ache he remembered. Bucky’s number came up. He was going to war. Steve had to watch him leave. Would have to watch the ghost leave, when this was done. This would end. This warmth would cool, these cries would stop, and he would be alone again.

But not yet.

Steve rolled his hips into the ghost, pressing the man’s groin between his hand and his erection, and the ghost tried to reach back for him. His left hand, machinery purring counterpoint to his moans. He touched Steve’s neck, grasped for his shoulder, couldn’t find purchase with metal fingers on sweat slick skin. He huffed frustration and stilled Steve’s hand.

“Let me face you.”

Of course. It had to be. He had to see his face. There was no other way.

Steve turned the ghost under him, kneed between his legs, and pressed down full length over him. He brought his mouth down to the ghost and found him waiting, clasping him into a promising kiss. Steve reveled in the body under him, rutting up into him and begging in his kiss for more. Steve ran his hands up the expanse of his sides, raked the nails down, watched him writhe. He reached between his legs, fingered along the man’s erection and down the cleft beyond, pressed the tip of a finger into his opening and watched his face. The ghost gasped and dropped his head back against the pillow, his mouth falling open and precious whimpers falling from it. That. Yes, that.

And Steve had to fumble in the bedside table drawer for a moment, had to endure the ghost’s whining despair at the loss of contact, but only for a moment. He was guessing, estimating a first, but he was erring on the side of caution. He was slick in his own hand, and then he was over the ghost, kissing him forcefully into the pillow and letting him take almost all of his weight on his chest. He barely propped himself up on his other arm, keeping them close, and the man beneath him didn’t need to be told to angle his hips up and dig his heels into the backs of Steve’s thighs. His mouth hung open, and his breath was pleading, urging Steve forward. Steve directed with one slipping hand, feeling his cock drag against the ghost’s opening and touch when he tilted, stopped, tilted again and caught… Right where he opened to take Steve in.

And Steve was gritting his teeth to move gradually. In and back, suddenly aware of how long an inch can be when his hands were clenched tight and he was determined not to hurt. _Oh my God_ was a wordless vowel sound in the ghost’s neck as he pressed him open. _It’s so good_ was a hissed consonant as he was covered in warmth. Pleasure he hadn’t been able to imagine, when he had tried. Tight softness, penetrating heat moving into him even as he moved into the man beneath him.

The ghost flinched, barely, made a tiny pained sound that quickly dissolved. Steve stilled, worried for causing him pain, but the ghost’s arms went up tight across Steve’s shoulders and hauled him down. The ghost kept him close, limiting his range, but Steve didn’t need much. He knew.

He could barely see the man’s face, turned away and screened by his hair, and he had to see. Had to believe it was true. To see it was him. His hips stuttered, making the ghost moan, and he reached out and cupped the ghost’s face in his hand to turn his head, brushed his hair aside to see his face. And yes, it was him. Completely destroyed by lust, watching him with nothing but bare need, but yes. A shade had fallen, and it was his face, his eyes, staring back across ages. His eyes were clear and he gazed back at Steve with the same wondrous adoration he felt.

“Bucky?” Steve asked, whispering against his lips.

“Yes,” Bucky whimpered. And so he was.

Steve kissed him, buried to the hilt, letting his head spin with the sensation of it and the monumental idea that it was _Bucky_ that surrounded him, _Bucky_ gasping against his shoulder, levering himself up to keep Steve deep inside him. Finally. He hadn’t known, that this was what he had been longing for. To mingle heat with heat and not know where he ended and Bucky began. He hadn’t a way to know that it was possible, in the years spent awkwardly fumbling around Bucky just to sneak a grazing touch, to be so joined. Though he should have known. How else could it be, when they were so joined in every other possible way?

But it was real. And it was him. And it was incredible. Knowing it was him, hearing him say it, knowing that Bucky was with him and the object of his lifelong affection was the sweating and panting man pinned under him. And Steve would have traded it, wanted to trade it, trade the possibility of ever even having it again, just to keep Bucky with him this time.

Steve drew out their connection, withdrew almost completely from Bucky’s body, submerged himself slowly, felt Bucky’s low moan through his chest. Did it again. And prayed, as he felt Bucky wrap around him and lost the edge of himself to their blended pleasure, that he could lose this and have Bucky stay instead. Even as the connection stunned him he begged to God in his uncontrolled breath and the pounding of his heart to take it away and just let him have his best friend back, knowing the value of the thing he would be giving up as the most beautiful experience of his life.

But God changed nothing. Bucky was still underneath him, still gazing at him, clutching at his hips to start him moving. And Steve took what he was given.

He kept up the slow pace as long as he could. Kept their bodies together, close and connected. Breathed in Bucky’s hair and his lips and the curve of his neck and the soft sounds tumbling into the air around them. Drove Bucky’s name into him with deliberate thrusts and gentle words. Heard his name returned.

But the pleasure was catching, narrowing to a point, and his hips started to snap forward, faster and harder. Words tumbled from his lips, a mess of pleas to heaven and thanks to the man beneath him. And Bucky was falling for it too, gasping open mouthed and pleading with him. Please. Yes. More. Bucky arched his back and tilted his hips, reached down and spread his right hand across the small of Steve’s back, directing with the press of his fingers. Steve saw him searching for just the perfect angle, and surprised bliss split his face when he found it. So Steve held that angle. He lowered one hand between them, wrapped it around Bucky, stroked him intently while he plunged into him, and watched his best friend come apart.

Bucky twisted under him, clawing into Steve’s back, still somehow managing even when he was out of his mind to not cause pain with the mechanical fingers Steve knew could break his ribs. He cried Steve’s name in a senseless prayer until his voice fell to silent gasps and he went almost completely still. For an instant Steve was confused, wondering what he’d done wrong. But then Bucky’s back curled, shoving his face into Steve’s shoulder, and he convulsed in his arms. He quickened in Steve’s hand and came hot and thick across them both, with no sound but a brief anguished whimper, and Steve thought it was very probable he had never seen anything as glorious.

Steve couldn’t stand Bucky’s trembling body and the tight muscles clamping around him with Bucky’s orgasm for long and he was buried in him a mere moment later, biting his cries down to a groan and chasing Bucky’s mouth to swipe his tongue deep, filling him. He knew, in Bucky’s hitching breath and desperate return of his kiss, it was right. 

And Steve vanished. His entire existence was pleasure, shared, searing his body away and leaving only their bond. Bucky was in his heart, in his soul, a part of him as he always had been. As deep in him as Steve was in his body, flowing into him and back again. Steve knew Bucky’s hands were on his back, Bucky’s chest was pressed flush to his, Bucky’s legs were gripping his hips, but all he could feel was Bucky. The being and actuality of him. Holding him up while he soared.

He didn’t collapse as he came down, held himself on one elbow, riding waves until he could open his eyes and see single images. Just one. Just Bucky’s face. He kissed his cheek, nuzzled into his hair, rolled his hips in short circles as the last tics of orgasm seized them both. Bucky clenched around him when he throbbed, a perfect feedback loop that made Steve feel like he was starting all over again even as he was softening. Back and forth, until Steve felt himself slip. His body wouldn’t let him start all over again. If he had known he could use it for Bucky, he would have asked Erskine for that. He wondered what the good doctor would have had to say about it.

Steve held Bucky reassuring close and pressed a soft kiss to his lips when he moved his hips back and slid out of his body to a whimper at the loss. He levered himself over onto his side, pulled Bucky into his arms, chasing that closeness and almost, almost finding it again, with Bucky’s body pressed against him and their limbs twined around each other, both seeking as much contact as they could manage. They clasped each other close for long breathless and sated moments while they both came down. Steve could feel Bucky’s heart, thundering but slowing against his chest.

Bucky took his hand, kissed his fingers, laid it across his face. And a thousand things to say queued behind Steve’s lips. So many declarations, so many questions, so many fulfillments of things unsaid for too long.

But he said the most important first.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Good.”

And the rest seemed trite. He’d said it all, when he was inside Bucky, and knew he’d heard it. Except…

“Bucky…”

_I love you._

“Don’t say it,” Bucky said first, reading Steve’s mind and covering his lips with his soft right hand to stop the words. “I swear to God Steve don’t say it. I have to go. They’ll kill me if I don’t hide. But if you say it I’m going to be stupid enough to stay and let them.”

_I love you too._

“Alright.”

But Bucky didn’t move to get up for a moment. Steve held him, combed his fingers through his hair, felt Bucky’s hands drawing random lovers’ circles on his back, and savored. He pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, another to his cheek, one at each corner of his mouth, and found center luxuriously. They shared short sweet kisses, sticking bodies protesting the continued friction but both men staunchly ignoring them. Just another minute. Just another. Just another.

Finally Bucky pulled back, placing one kiss on Steve’s lips that held painful finality. He disentangled himself with as much silence as machinery would allow, and sat up on the edge of the bed. Steve pulled a clean hand towel out of his bedside drawer and handed it to him wordlessly. Bucky rolled his eyes, shook his head, and wiped himself off as best he could, without embarrassment. He tossed the towel through the open bathroom door and retrieved his clothes. Steve sat up on the bed behind him, watching him dress, mourning the disappearing skin.

“Just don’t get killed without me,” he said, trying to sound light and sounding only heartbroken.

“I’ll try my best.”

When he was dressed Steve reached out and grabbed a fistful of his shirt, pulling him back to kiss him, to leave him with the taste of Steve on his lips if he couldn’t go with him. Bucky let him, working his fingers through Steve’s hair and fighting to release it. Every day, Steve knew, he was going to regret letting this kiss end. Every day he was going to regret that he didn’t flip Bucky back onto his bed and dive into him again, hold up everything he was as a shield over them, and make him stay.

But he didn’t.

Bucky pulled away from the kiss and sighed, eyes a war between sorrow and determination.

“I’m sure you’ll find me,” he said.

“I’ll sure as hell try.”

Bucky stood up, and moved for the door. He didn’t turn back.

“Not saying goodbye,” he said, as he rounded the corner and disappeared from Steve’s view.

“Good.”

Bucky left. Steve didn’t watch, to see how he’d gotten in. The ghost had surprised him, but Bucky had come to him. And then he was gone. The room was silent, and without the press of warmth against him the sweat drying on Steve’s body was cold. Steve fell back into his bed, into his rumpled sheets still smelling of Bucky’s skin, and wept.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed please continue in the series!


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